“Washington has never made any effort to conceal its contempt for North Korea. In the 64 years since the war ended, the US has done everything in its power to punish, humiliate and inflict pain on the Communist country. Washington has subjected the DPRK to starvation, prevented its government from accessing foreign capital and markets, strangled its economy with crippling economic sanctions, and installed lethal missile systems and military bases on their doorstep.

Negotiations aren’t possible because Washington refuses to sit down with a country which it sees as its inferior. Instead, the US has strong-armed China to do its bidding by using their diplomats as interlocutors who are expected to convey Washington’s ultimatums as threateningly as possible. The hope, of course, is that Pyongyang will cave in to Uncle Sam’s bullying and do what they are told.

But the North has never succumbed to US intimidation and there’s no sign that it will. Instead, they have developed a small arsenal of nuclear weapons to defend themselves in the event that the US tries to assert its dominance by launching another war.
There’s no country in the world that needs nuclear weapons more than North Korea. Brainwashed Americans, who get their news from FOX or CNN, may differ on this point, but if a hostile nation deployed carrier strike-groups off the coast of California while conducting massive war games on the Mexican border (with the express intention of scaring the shit of people) then they might see things differently. They might see the value of having a few nuclear weapons to deter that hostile nation from doing something really stupid.

And let’s be honest, the only reason Kim Jong Un hasn’t joined Saddam and Gadhafi in the great hereafter, is because (a)– The North does not sit on an ocean of oil, and (b)– The North has the capacity to reduce Seoul, Okinawa and Tokyo into smoldering debris-fields. Absent Kim’s WMDs, Pyongyang would have faced a preemptive attack long ago and Kim would have faced a fate similar to Gadhafi’s. Nuclear weapons are the only known antidote to US adventurism.

The American people –whose grasp of history does not extend beyond the events of 9-11 — have no idea of the way the US fights its wars or the horrific carnage and destruction it unleashed on the North. Here’s a short refresher that helps clarify why the North is still wary of the US more than 60 years after the armistice was signed. The excerpt is from an article titled “Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea”, at Vox World:

“In the early 1950s, during the Korean War, the US dropped more bombs on North Korea than it had dropped in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. This carpet bombing, which included 32,000 tons of napalm, often deliberately targeted civilian as well as military targets, devastating the country far beyond what was necessary to fight the war. Whole cities were destroyed, with many thousands of innocent civilians killed and many more left homeless and hungry….

According to US journalist Blaine Harden: “Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — 20 percent of the population,” Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, told the Office of Air Force History in 1984. Dean Rusk, a supporter of the war and later secretary of state, said the United States bombed “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another.” After running low on urban targets, U.S. bombers destroyed hydroelectric and irrigation dams in the later stages of the war, flooding farmland and destroying crops……

“On January 3 at 10:30 AM an armada of 82 flying fortresses loosed their death-dealing load on the city of Pyongyang …Hundreds of tons of bombs and incendiary compound were simultaneously dropped throughout the city, causing annihilating fires, the transatlantic barbarians bombed the city with delayed-action high-explosive bombs which exploded at intervals for a whole day making it impossible for the people to come out onto the streets. The entire city has now been burning, enveloped in flames, for two days. By the second day, 7,812 civilians houses had been burnt down. The Americans were well aware that there were no military targets left in Pyongyang…

The number of inhabitants of Pyongyang killed by bomb splinters, burnt alive and suffocated by smoke is incalculable…Some 50,000 inhabitants remain in the city which before the war had a population of 500,000.” (“Americans have forgotten what we did to North Korea“, Vox World)

The United States killed over 2 million people in a country that posed no threat to US national security. Like Vietnam, the Korean War was just another muscle-flexing exercise the US periodically engages in whenever it gets bored or needs some far-flung location to try out its new weapons systems. The US had nothing to gain in its aggression on the Korean peninsula, it was mix of imperial overreach and pure unalloyed viciousness the likes of which we’ve seen many times in the past. According to the Asia-Pacific Journal:

“By the fall of 1952, there were no effective targets left for US planes to hit. Every significant town, city and industrial area in North Korea had already been bombed. In the spring of 1953, the Air Force targeted irrigation dams on the Yalu River, both to destroy the North Korean rice crop and to pressure the Chinese, who would have to supply more food aid to the North. Five reservoirs were hit, flooding thousands of acres of farmland, inundating whole towns and laying waste to the essential food source for millions of North Koreans.10 Only emergency assistance from China, the USSR, and other socialist countries prevented widespread famine.” (“The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950 – 1960”, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Focus)

Repeat: “Reservoirs, irrigation dams, rice crops, hydroelectric dams, population centers” all napalmed, all carpet bombed, all razed to the ground. Nothing was spared. If it moved it was shot, if it didn’t move, it was bombed. The US couldn’t win, so they turned the country into an uninhabitable wastelands. “Let them starve. Let them freeze.. Let them eat weeds and roots and rodents to survive. Let them sleep in the ditches and find shelter in the rubble. What do we care? We’re the greatest country on earth. God bless America.”

This is how Washington does business, and it hasn’t changed since the Seventh Cavalry wiped out 150 men, women and children at Wounded Knee more than century ago. The Lakota Sioux at Pine Ridge got the same basic treatment as the North Koreans, or the Vietnamese, or the Nicaraguans, or the Iraqis and on and on and on and on. Anyone else who gets in Uncle Sam’s way, winds up in a world of hurt. End of story.

The savagery of America’s war against the North left an indelible mark on the psyche of the people. Whatever the cost, the North cannot allow a similar scenario to take place in the future. Whatever the cost, they must be prepared to defend themselves. If that means nukes, then so be it. Self preservation is the top priority.

Is there a way to end this pointless standoff between Pyongyang and Washington, a way to mend fences and build trust?

Of course there is. The US just needs to start treating the DPRK with respect and follow through on their promises.

Most people think the problem lies with North Korea, but it doesn’t. The problem lies with the United States; it’s unwillingness to negotiate an end to the war, its unwillingness to provide basic security guarantees to the North, its unwillingness to even sit down with the people who –through Washington’s own stubborn ignorance– are now developing long-range ballistic missiles that will be capable of hitting American cities.

How dumb is that?

The Trump team is sticking with a policy that has failed for 63 years and which clearly undermines US national security by putting American citizens directly at risk. AND FOR WHAT?

To preserve the image of “tough guy”, to convince people that the US doesn’t negotiate with weaker countries, to prove to the world that “whatever the US says, goes”? Is that it? Is image more important than a potential nuclear disaster?

Relations with the North can be normalized, economic ties can be strengthened, trust can be restored, and the nuclear threat can be defused. The situation with the North does not have to be a crisis, it can be fixed. It just takes a change in policy, a bit of give-and-take, and leaders that genuinely want peace more than war.”

Now the Syrian rebels. Is it not strange. US-NATO-EU went into Libya and Syria to get rid of hideous and dangerous dictators that torture people in prisons or whatever excuses that were used to create non-fly zones over Libya and to send guns and help train rebels in Syria.
Then the rebels turn out to be exactly as hideous and torturing as the current leaders. What was the aim then? Was it not to get rid of horrendous actions, or was it to control those who does the actions?

There are real reasons and manufactured reasons. In the future only the real reasons should be allowed to come to fruition if these reasons are noble. The manufactured reasons should be exposed to the fullest extent and the people hiding in manufacturing shall be sent to prison or an insane asylum.

Most of us instruct children not to tell lies, because once they start they avalanche out of control. Especially if you can get away with murder, money fraud and other sinful acts.

I suppose if your viewpoint is to be against America justification can be found in any number of ways.

The main point being that many in North Korea are still eating grass and this has nothing to do with America. America nuked Japan but they have flourished. Germany has too. NK remains dirt poor and it’s not because of America. The condition of NK is about 80% due to the vision of its leaders. This is who these people are. They are insane dead-enders who literally wish to be exhalted as Gods while their people suffer and are brutally mistreated. It is no surprise that SK has flourished while NK is what it is.

China and Russia prop them up but also try to maintain plausible deniability.

Thank you to the Author. I learned much.
As is usual in war, innocent civilians suffer the most.
Civilian deaths : Collateral Damage, the US calls it.
How sad, what a dreadful world we inhabit. Peace, why can’t we have peace.

We do Hans, because this is the turning of the cycle, the ages change and with such change comes great upheaval. If we have the courage to change ourselves first, the world around us will change of it’s own, because it is but a reflection of our collective, currently fractured inner vision….

Because the big MIC companies MUST have war or they lose profits. Interestingly enough, I learned a while back that the US MIC has factories and additional secondary spin-off corporations/businesses in EVERY state in the US….that means jobs and is one reason why you cannot find anyone in Congress who is against any war!

The world would be a better place if we got rid of all the psychopaths and sociopaths. 3-5% of the world population are psychopaths. Half of them are in prison, the other half are men and women running large corporations and government. These thugs have no conscience and will literally kill to get ahead. As species we have failed. If we can’t flush these non humans down a huge drain, normal people will suffer for the rest of eternity.

All true Jason, all true. Perhaps the best start is to rid our own selves of any hint of such psycopathy, because the outer world is a reflection of our inner worlds and we are collectively responsible for the projection we are currently experiencing.

Hey are you the fascinating bloke who wrote a brilliant critique on that hellish outsourcing phenomenon from the early 2000s? I may have contacted you a while back as the bloke who travelled in 1992 in Ladakh and was blown away at their self-sufficiency. I also mentioned I used to be a friend of the Dean of AIIMS in Delhi. I contacted you mid-2016 I believe.

I was back then pro-Brexit and by extension pro-Trump. My opinion has altered with hindsight. Brexit was right but this bloke (Trump) we (the West) wanted is turning out to be the biggest … on earth. When he went to Saudi and sold those crims bombs my jaw dropped. What a huge mistake the West made with him.

Seems we would be going down the same road as all Presidents back to Bush 1. War is ruthless and I voted for Trump hoping that our War Machine would be brought home from all the Failed Nation Building exercises! Can’t say I would really trust the Fat Squirrely Guy with deliverable nukes. I actually have a different outlook on the whole situation, I think he is more of basically a Regional Governor of China. We do something China doesn’t like, say sending our Navy near their new artificial Island and they tell Rocket Boy to start acting up. Trump is right to start squeezing China, war & peace to china are both part of their world, they think differently, they only care what is best for them. Trump has them boxed in, every time Trump issues a sanction whether it be against China or Rocket Boy..they tell him to do something provocative. Trump just signed a new Executive Order which is actually geared more towards China then anybody else, that is why you probably read that China told it’s Central Bank to have all banks cut off Rocket Boy. China has boxed itself in, ever time Rocket Boy does something, China will be punished. China knows this and sooner or later to save face, which is very important in their culture, as sanctions start to hurt them, they will make Rocket Boy relent and blame it all on him to restore their trade with the US. China is out for what is best for them and we are their biggest trading partner. They will sacrifice Rocket Boy to allow them to make the best trade deal possible for themselves knowing Trump is negotiating all new trade deals. There will be no war on the Korean Peninsula, this is all playing out as designed. Basically this the “Art of the Deal”. I am a bit concerned on Trump listening to the neocons over Syria & Afghanistan though! If it was up to me, I would close all the bases around the world and bring all the soldiers Home! Trump is fighting the Shadow Government & Deep State, not to mention any other crisis that pops up. We are at a point where we could project military power any where in the world directly from the US, maybe keep a few strategic bases just for convenience. I would be more worried with all the fake Russia Hysteria, that one slip in Syria could make things go hot! Trump needs to get rid of McMasters and his Ilk and go back to his original campaign plan, but the Deep State & Shadow Government know that there is Trillions of Dollars at stake to keep perpetual war going!

A note about comments

Greetings. This being a place to primarily exchange ideas, I thought I'd share a few pointers for comments, which in my mind would result in a healthy exchange of ideas.
a) 0 profanity policy. Any curse word, even if #$%$ will lead to automatic deletion. They are un-necessary.
b) if posting a link, whether to your own blog or otherwise, please ensure that you are keeping with the theme of the post you are commenting on and have something original to say in that regard. Sometimes just a link works fine too and oftentimes an off-topic tug is needed. But good to keep in mind as a general guiding principle.
c) 0 ad homenim policy. needless and dialouge destroying. If you have not found a way to move beyond the messenger, then that should be priority one, before commenting.
Appreciate the understanding and against censorship.
Regards all around a big thank you to all the folks who have come by and engaged.